1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of radio communications networks planning, particularly to the planning of cellular mobile radio communications networks like for example GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) networks and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
The past approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not to be considered prior art to the claims in this application merely due to the presence of these approaches in this background section of the document.
As known, a cellular mobile radio communications network includes a plurality of antennas or radio base stations, each one providing radio communications coverage in a respective geographic area, referred to as a cell.
Deploying a cellular mobile radio communications network includes planning the location, the configuration and the radio communications resources (e.g., GSM radio carriers) to be allocated to the different radio base stations.
In particular, the aim of the network designers is to ensure that each radio base station has sufficient radio resources to serve all the traffic that is expected to be generated by the users' mobile communications terminals located in the respective cell (so as for example to minimize blocked calls and dropped calls), without however wasting precious radio resources.
One of the key aspects in the planning of cellular mobile radio communications networks is the ability to forecast, estimate the distribution of the network traffic in the geographic area intended to be covered by the network under planning (which may be a new area of coverage of a mobile cellular radio communications network, or an already deployed network area, which needs to be updated).
A correct forecast of the traffic distribution is indeed essential to a proper dimensioning of the radio resources of the different cells of a network area to be planned, and thus to the capability of satisfying the requests by the users, thereby providing a highly satisfactory service thereto.
A method for estimating traffic distribution in a mobile communication network is disclosed in the published US patent application US 2003/0186693. The method disclosed in that document includes collecting statistical information with regard to a quantity of communication traffic and with regard to quality indicators associated with the traffic in a region served by the mobile communications network. The quality indicators include the average carrier/interference (C/I) ratio, specific levels of interference from other cells, and frequency of handovers between cells. The region is divided into areas belonging to respective traffic types. A respective traffic density is estimated for each of the traffic types based on the statistical information collected with regard to the quantity of the traffic and the quality indicators. According to that document, the resulting traffic density map allows optimization of the antenna configuration and frequency distribution among the cells.